Prince of Darkness
by Seriana Ritani
Summary: Chloe Decker learns that her partner has never lied to her. Picking up at the Season 3 cliffhanger.
1. Chapter 1

Chloe Decker was paralyzed. Paralyzed with _what _was a good question, but whatever the root cause, she was paralyzed.

Her brain stem, the part of her body and mind that remembered what it was to be a beast of prey, was flooding her bloodstream with adrenalin as it tried frantically decided whether to fight, flee, or freeze. Freeze was winning by default. Her legs were trembling underneath her, unable to hold still but equally unable to decide how to move.

_Lucifer_, her brain whispered soothingly. _It's Lucifer. It's just Lucifer._

_IT'S LUCIFER! _her body screamed. _IT'S SATAN HIMSELF!_

It was. It was all of those things. It was a demon, an inhuman monster, skin red and furrowed with darkness, eyes glowing. And it was her friend, still in his perfectly tailored sport coat with the scarlet pocket square, his hand extended towards her with the palm out in the _everybody just stay calm_ gesture he'd seen her use so many times with so many freaked-out, gun-wielding suspects. _Lucifer_. Falling from heaven. Playing Monopoly on her coffee table. Rebelling against God. Coaxing sweet music from his piano. Ruling Hell. Ruling Lux.

_He never lied to me._

The thought hit her like a ton of bricks. He was a demon from hell and that meant that he was neither crazy nor a liar. He'd always, for three years, been consistently and doggedly honest with her.

She moved. Or tried to. What happened was that her left leg tried to rush toward Lucifer, either to embrace or to throttle him, and her right leg tried to flee in panic, and she fell in an ungainly heap on the floor. Lucifer lunged forward by reflex . . . to catch her? To kill her? . . . but froze in his tracks when she choked, "Don't!"

Now her hand was up in the _stay-calm_ signal, keeping him away from her. She needed to think. There was too much happening inside her head. She felt like she was drowning in revelation. Wait, that was because she wasn't breathing. She breathed.

His brow was furrowed, worry and confusion written all over his leathery red face. _If you saw all of me,_ he'd said, _you'd run_.

_How I feel about you_, he'd said.

Wasn't he . . . the father of lies? Or something . . . she'd been to church maybe a dozen times in her whole life and her biblical literacy was sparse to non-existent. Or was she thinking of Dante? Was Dante speaking from experience? Did Lucifer know Dante? He always seemed to know everyone . . .

"Detective?" The question was hesitant and full of trepidation. She'd been sitting here on this floor, one leg folded awkwardly underneath her, staring at him for what had to be at least a few minutes now.

She had to say something, or he'd think she was catatonic and take her to a hospital. _Was _she catatonic? Was this what that felt like?

She couldn't be catatonic. Trixie. Trixie needed her to function. And Dan. And Ella. She had to say something, because they needed her.

"Horns," she said.

Lucifer frowned, blinking in bewilderment. "What?"

"I thought . . ." She reached up to gesture some curves extending from her forehead. "I thought you'd have horns."

For a moment, he stared at her, as blankly as she was staring at him. "And a tail as well, I assume? Cloven hooves?"

"You don't get to make jokes right now," she snapped, and he seemed to hear the edge of panic in her voice because the nascent smile on his face vanished.

"That was uncalled for," he admitted. "I apologize."

An inhuman demonic monster was apologizing to her. He sounded almost prim. The voice was so familiar, trusted, and normal that she was tempted to crane sideways to see if Lucifer was standing right behind that devil creature. She took two more breaths, keeping oxygen flowing to her overworked brain.

"Okay," she said, carefully and with artificial steadiness. "Sit down."

"What, on the floor?"

"My whole body is freaking out while you're looming over me like that, and I can't think, so I need you to _sit the hell down_."

Lucifer eased himself onto the marble floor.

Was that better? A little. At least now she'd have a little bit of warning if he tried to lunge at her, as her every nerve insisted he was going to do any second.

"What next?" he asked, his voice careful and full of forced calm.

_What next? _He'd just switched his familiar, handsome, insufferable face for the visage of Satan himself and now he expected _her_ to take the lead in this conversation?

She scrubbed one hand across her mouth and cheek, trying to focus. "Your face," she choked. "Can you . . . change it back?"

The hurt in his eyes was immediate and heartbreaking.

"Just for a minute," she clarified hastily. "Just so I can think. For a minute. I need to see my partner."

This seemed to mollify him. He took one deep, steadying breath . . . and then there he was. Lucifer. _Her _Lucifer. The dark brown eyes, the perfect hair, the dimple in his chin.

She was filled with a sudden, irrational, close to overwhelming desire to throw herself into his arms and sob about the nightmare she'd had where he'd turned into a demon.

Okay. Think. From the beginning. Her world had reshaped itself around her and she needed to establish its new dimensions.

"So," she began. "You are the devil. The actual devil. Not just a horrible person that does too many drugs at work."

"I am . . . both of those things," he admitted cautiously.

"Your dad . . . the one you're constantly complaining about . . . is God."

"Yes."

None of this was strictly _new_ information, but there was a difference between listening to your harmlessly crazy colleague jabber about his extended metaphor for his own life and conversing with the incarnation of evil. "Amenadiel?" she inquired next.

"Is my older brother," he finished for her, "and the greatest among the angels."

"And Maze?"

"The chief torturer of the infernal realms."

"And Charlotte?"

"Charlotte is . . . complicated."

"Don't give me that. Explain."

"Charlotte . . . the Charlotte that we lost . . . was an ordinary, mortal human woman. She was made a pawn of forces far beyond her ken, but she was trying to become a better person, and I think that in the end, she succeeded."

Chloe nodded, accepting this as enough of an answer for now. "And Linda?"

"Linda, oddly enough, is just my therapist."

Her relief at this was so intense that she almost started laughing.

"And . . ." She gestured past Lucifer, where her boss and ex-fiance lay motionless on the floor with a curved metal object protruding from his chest.

Lucifer swallowed nervously. "That would be Cain. The first murderer of mankind. Cursed with immortality for his sin, until . . ." He paused briefly to wet his lips and choose his words. "Until he learned to love someone else more than he loved himself."

_Oh. _

Chloe felt momentarily nauseous. Cain, the first murderer, had fallen in love . . . with her. As had Lucifer. Or had he? _How I feel about you_, he'd said. But had he just been screwing with her? But he had never lied to her . . . though that didn't actually rule out screwing with her; he did that all the time.

"And . . ." She swallowed, steeling herself to ask, bracing against what the answer might be. "And what about me?"

Lucifer looked at her for a long moment. It was the look he'd given her two nights ago on his balcony . . . the one that made heat press through the skin of her face and chest and shoulders, that made her heart speed up and her head spin.

"You," he said at last, "are a miracle from God."

He was being metaphorical again. Except wait . . . he wasn't ever metaphorical. He never had been.

"Amenadiel was sent from heaven to grant your mother the child she wanted," Lucifer explained, carefully watching for her reaction. "You are the product of divine intervention. Your being alive, born to your parents at that exact time, was so crucially important that God himself decreed that you would be. And you were. And you are."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I'm done trying to second-guess my father. I'm just . . . grateful." His ironic smile twitched across his face. "Yes, I, the actual devil, am grateful to Almighty God for one thing, and that one thing is you."

Chloe's memory flicked back to two nights ago, where the most overwhelming, terrifying, complex aspect of her life was how she felt about her partner and how he felt about her. Then her boss had murdered her friend and she'd thrown herself in front of a bullet and the actual devil was explaining the nature of the universe to her. All while Question A remained unresolved.

One more question. "How did I get up on the roof?"

"Oh. That. Yes. Um . . ."

Dear God, he was actually _nervous_. Nervous and embarrassed, like a seventh grader who hadn't done his homework. He scrubbed awkwardly at the back of his neck, avoiding eye contact.

"Lucifer," she insisted gently, ducking her head a little to catch his eye. "I saw you. And I'm still here. I'm not running."

He sighed. "No, you're not."

"How did I get on the roof?"

He closed his eyes tight and pressed his lips together, bracing for something. Then something moved behind his head. For a split second, she thought it was Pierce, not dead after all, climbing to his feet . . . but then it unfolded, with a _whumph_ of displaced air and the familiar reek of blood.

One wing. Other wing. Like kindergarten-aged Trixie struggling to get her arms through the straps of her backpack. The span of them had to be at least twelve feet. They were snowy white where they weren't stained with blood or gunpowder residue. And now that she knew what to look for . . . now that she knew what she was looking _at_ . . . she could see the shredded remains of white feathers scattered all across the room.

"Now, I don't want you to get the wrong idea, Detective," he protested feebly, dwarfed by his own wings. "This isn't what it looks like. I am no angel."

"I've worked with you for _three years_, Lucifer. I know you're no angel."

This had clearly never occurred to him. He opened his mouth, thought for a minute, and closed it again without saying anything.

Gingerly, shakily, Chloe climbed to her feet. Her right shoulder ached like murder where the bullet had hit her. "Can I . . . _may_ I . . . touch them?"

He acquiesced with a nod. Not even one innuendo joke, and she knew perfectly well she'd set herself up for one.

He obligingly folded one wing as she walked around him, getting it out of her way, then stretched it out again for her inspection.

His primary feathers had to be eighteen inches long . . . longer than an eagle feather or a turkey feather or any other feather she'd ever seen. She reached out a tentative hand and brushed their surface, careful to avoid the stains and to not disarrange the individual fibers. Lucifer hissed.

She yanked her hand back. "I'm sorry! Did I hurt you?"

"No," he assured her. "It just, um, tickles."

Suddenly, both wings shuddered and flicked, like the skin of a horse bothered by flies. Chloe jumped, but only a little. When both the wings and her heart rate had calmed down, she extended her hand again. Firmer this time. Not tickling.

The wings joined to his back exactly along the long, brutal arcs of the scars she'd seen long ago. Of course, he was still in his shirt and jacket. Neither was damaged. The wings just . . . came through. As if the fabric at that particular point had become imaginary.

She touched the fabric of his jacket, then the base of his wing. There was no join, no hole, no transition. It was just one thing, then quite suddenly was the other thing.

Oh, well. It wasn't even in the top ten odd things that she'd encountered today. And really, the more immediate problem was the bright red mottling across his feathers.

"How freaked out should I be," she asked carefully, "about all this blood?"

"Not a bit. Rinses right off."

"Okay." If he was deliberately misunderstanding her, he was fine.

The wings were slowly normalizing in her head an under her hand. Chloe was a detective to her bones; the evidence was everything. What she saw, she believed. Lucifer had wings. She could see them, feel them. She could handle them. She could handle all of this. She _would_.

She made her way around him again; he politely tucked his other wing against his back and out of her path. She went down on one knee before him, coming eye to eye with her partner. He was still looking deflated and uncertain, which was not at all usual, but there was a restrained glimmer of hope in his face.

"Okay," she said, with a steadying breath. "Show me again."

"Are you sure?"

"No, but do it anyway."

He did so.

It was still a shock, but at least this time it was not a surprise. Here was Satan himself, eyes glowing like embers, looking what could only be described as _sheepish_.

She reached out one cautious hand to touch his cheek. She half expected it to be scorching hot, but the temperature was only a few degrees above what she'd expect from a human. Where his jaw was usually rough with roguish stubble, his skin was hairless and firm, rather like leather.

Lucifer sucked in his breath at her touch, and some part of her body that wasn't panicking was remembering how he'd panted when their heartbreakingly brief kiss had been interrupted by her ringing phone. A split second of blissful simplicity. She missed it.

Cautiously, she went over every inch of his face and his head—the ridges that drew back along his skull, the exaggerated cleft in his pointed chin, the prominent sockets around his glowing eyes. They were actually glowing; she could see them reflecting off the palm of her hand. He suffered this examination in uncharacteristic stillness and silence, letting her get her bearings.

Finally, she sat back on her heels. "Okay. Is there anything else?"

He glanced up toward the ceiling while he considered the question. "Wings, face, actually am the devil, Cain, angels, me not being one. I think that's the worst of it."

"Which face is easier?"

"Um . . . the human one, these days. I've got used to it, you see. In point of fact, this one has been AWOL for some time now."

"Then how about you switch back, and we can figure out what we're going to do about all this." She gestured to the collection of dead bodies sharing the room with them.

"Right." He hesitated for a minute, then asked, "That's really it? No screaming?"

"Haven't ruled it out for later, but for right now I just want to sleep for a year, and I can't do that until we figure out what we're going to tell the precinct."

Slowly, a delighted smile spread across his face . . . and halfway through, his face transformed again and her charming, infuriating partner was back. "Well then, Detective, let's get to work."

They worked it out while he gingerly eased his injured wings back into concealment. They'd stick to the truth, as much as possible; the hit man, the mythical sister, the trap. A quick change of wardrobe, moving the bulletproof vest from Chloe to Lucifer, helped to explain the decimated state of the front of his shirt. The goons had opened fire; Chloe had returned it; a few had been caught in their own crossfire, then Marcus had come at Lucifer with a knife and he'd been killed in the ensuing struggle. The whole story made Chloe look like something of an idiot, a passive observer to Lucifer's heroics, but that was a small price to pay. At least it gave them the advantage of both being "eyewitnesses," each vouching for the other's innocence.

When they had it straight, they called Dan. And in far less time than Chloe needed to get her head round everything, the room was crawling with LAPD.

Ella seemed to be everywhere at once: hugging Chloe, collecting bullet casings, hugging Lucifer, tagging blood spatter, hugging Dan, poking purple-gloved fingers into dead bodies. Dan stood in the middle of the chaos, staring abstractedly at Marcus's cooling body. Chloe heard herself talking, though it didn't feel like she was actually in charge of her mouth; she just recited what she and Lucifer had laid out, pausing every few seconds as Lucifer interjected unwelcome but blessedly normal commentary, emphasizing what was true and discreetly ignoring what wasn't. He was, in turn, interrupted every few comments by Ella, offering helpful insights as to how the evidence bore out their story.

"There's just one thing I can't figure out," Ella observed as she lowered her camera. "Where did all the feathers come from?"

"Feathers?" asked Lucifer blankly, as though he hadn't noticed them.

"Yeah. It looks like somebody shot a pillow, or a duvet, but I can't actually _find_ a pillow or a duvet. Or a swan, or, like, a half dozen chickens." She spat a bit of inhaled feather out of her mouth. "Weird."

"Very," Chloe agreed.

Ella leaned in and examined Chloe's face. "You should go home," she pronounced. "You're completely out of it."

Chloe shook her head. "No, I can't leave Dan alone . . ."

"I've got Dan. I won't leave him alone. I promise. You _really _need to sleep. And to see your kid."

Trixie. She did need to see Trixie.

"I've got her," Lucifer promised, taking Chloe by the shoulders and steering her toward the exit. "Come along, Detective."

Chloe followed his direction with what might have been a suspicious degree of meekness if anyone had been paying attention. Lucifer bundled her peremptorily into the car, extracted it from the melee of police vehicles by means of driving the wrong way up a mercifully deserted one-way street, showed complete contempt for speed limits, and pulled into her driveway in considerably less than twenty minutes just as the bright orange sunset light was hitting the front windows.

The babysitter . . . what _was _her name? Laurie? No, Louisa . . . had been there since school had ended. Chloe was apologizing almost before she walked in the door. "Louisa, I'm so sorry—"

"Oh, no worries, Ms. Decker," Louisa protested cheerfully as she stood up from the kitchen table. "I don't have any class first period tomorrow anyway." Her textbooks and notebooks were spread in a penumbra around her seat. Behind her, in the living room, Trixie barely glanced up from her episode of _Carmen Sandiego_.

"Well, let me—"

"No, let _me_." Lucifer nudged her skillfully to the side as he reached into his pocket for his wallet. "I'll settle this, Detective. Why don't you go say hello to your offspring?"

His voice got Trixie's attention. "Hi, Lucifer!"

"Greetings," he returned offhandedly, already sorting through a wad of large-denomination bills.

Chloe dropped onto the couch next to her daughter and pulled her into a tight embrace. "Hey, Monkey," she murmured into her hair. "I'm so glad to see you; I missed you so much . . ."

"Mom, are you okay?" Trixie wriggled out of her grip to get a look at her face.

"Yes, baby, I'm fine. It's just . . ." She took a breath to brace herself. "You know Daddy's friend Charlotte?"

"Yeah."

"She . . . was killed. And we've got the guy who did it, but . . . it's been a really hard day for everybody."

Trixie obligingly snuggled into her mom's arms and hugged her hard. "I'm so sorry, Mom."

"It's okay. Our family's going to be okay."

Behind her, Chloe heard the door open as Lucifer let Louisa out with more profusions of gratitude. Without letting go of Trixie, she twisted around to see him. He was hesitating in the doorway, watching her, uncertain whether to stay or make a discreet exit.

_Stay_, she mouthed to him. He nodded and closed the door.

While she went through the comforting ritual of herding Trixie into bed, Lucifer sat at the kitchen counter and made phone calls. Their import became clear when she emerged from Trixie's room and found him digging through her freezer with a dish towel in hand.

"Ice," he announced, emerging with a long-forgotten cold pack. "Dr. Linda's orders. That shoulder is going to lead to awkward questions, seeing as how you aren't supposed to have been hit with any bullets and are reported to have not been wearing body armor."

This was undeniable. "Let me just brush my teeth first . . ."

He did not let her do anything of the kind. Instead, he stood with her in the bathroom and held the ice pack to her shoulder while she brushed her teeth and washed her face one-handed. It was ridiculous, but probably no more ridiculous than Satan being in her bathroom to begin with.

"All those games of Bloody Mary," she observed wryly, after spitting the last of the toothpaste foam into the sink.

"Beg your pardon?"

"When I was a kid, we girls would dare each other to turn off the lights in the bathroom, splash water on the mirror, and turn around three times chanting 'Bloody Mary.' It was supposed to summon a demon or something."

"Oh, it did. Sometimes. When Maze was bored."

"Well, never worked for me. And all of a sudden, here's the devil in my bathroom, and I didn't even have to draw a pentagram."

"You're really taking all of this remarkably . . . flippantly."

"That's rich, coming from you." She reached up, meaning to take the ice pack from him, but instead found her hand resting on his while she met his eyes in the mirror. "Can you stay?"

The question was yet another perfect setup for a sexual innuendo, but Lucifer spurned the bait like a gentleman. "Do you want me to?"

She nodded. "I just . . . don't want to be alone tonight."

He tipped his head until his cheek . . . stubbly and familiar . . . rested against her hair. "Your every desire, Detective, whatever it may be, is my command."

His politeness was almost starting to freak her out. She let go of his hand and took the ice pack. "There's a spare toothbrush in this drawer," she indicated. "I'll find you something to sleep in."

"Remember you're supposed to keep the ice pack on for another six minutes!" he called after her.

She was back in a minute, holding a pair of baggy gray NYPD sweatpants and an t-shirt that read "Fallen Officers Memorial 5K 2015." "There isn't any shaving stuff," she apologized. "Well, not for men, anyway. Not since Dan moved out."

"I'm sure I'll manage." He shook out the t-shirt and examined it. "You do have rather niche tastes in your bedfellows' sleepwear, don't you?"

"_Now_ you're sounding more like yourself." She closed the door on him and went to change into her own pajamas.

Her bed. It had been hers exclusively since well before her divorce. She and Marcus . . . well, she'd been cautious about letting her dating and her parenting overlap. At least she'd exercised caution in _one_ aspect of that relationship. She turned on the mismatched nightstand lamps, then crawled into bed and lay on her back . . . not her usual position, but the easiest way to keep the ice pack on her sore shoulder.

Lucifer joined her just in time to whisk the cold pack away and back into the freezer. Then he joined her under her blankets, moving cautiously, as though unsure of his welcome or where the limits of their drastically redefined relationship now lay.

Before she could launch into that conversation, for which she absolutely did not have the emotional energy, a welcome distraction appeared in the doorway. "Mom?"

And this was _exactly _why she didn't let men stay over at her place.

Her face flushed scarlet, but Trixie appeared totally unphased by the sight of Lucifer in her mother's bed. "Oh, hey, Lucifer. Are you sleeping over?"

"That is the general idea," Lucifer retorted, with the trace of impatience he always used with Trixie and that Trixie freely ignored.

"I just needed to not be alone tonight," Chloe hastened to explain.

Trixie nodded. "I kinda . . . don't want to be alone either."

Poor kid. Of course she didn't, after hearing about what had happened . . . even just a fraction of what had happened. Chloe patted the coverlet. "Come on in, Kiddo."

She glanced at Lucifer, more to gauge his reaction than because he had a say in the matter. He rolled his eyes and sighed. "Fine, human larvae. In you get."

Trixie scrambled under the covers, settling in on her mother's other side. Chloe reached out with her good arm to pet her daughter's hair, trying to remember the last time that Chloe had retreated to this bed for comfort. It had been a long time, but brought back so many memories . . . infant Trixie fussing to be fed, toddler Trixie afraid of ghosts, first grade Trixie brokenhearted because Ashleigh-with-a-GH had said she didn't get to be in their friend group anymore.

"Dad really liked Charlotte, huh?" Trixie asked carefully.

"Yeah, Monkey. I think he really did."

"I'm sorry she died."

"I am too, sweetheart."

She felt Lucifer's arm come around her shoulders, and caught a hint of the expensive cologne his abbreviated ablutions hadn't quite erased. "I don't know if it helps," he offered carefully, "But she is, in fact, in a better place. She had a personal escort to the Silver City of God."

Trixie raised her head a little to look at Lucifer over Chloe. "Is that what you believe?"

"That," said Lucifer, sounding affronted, "Is what I _know_."

"What's it like?"

He shrugged. "Well, if you've seen one celestial city you've seen them all, really. There's a river that runs through it, and the water smells like the flowers you sometimes encounter in really, really good dreams but can't remember afterward. There are gardens and fountains, and wide green lawns for all the dogs to play on . . ."

"There are dogs?"

"Well, of _course_ there are dogs; where else would dogs go? And the sun is always shining . . . so it's a bit like Los Angeles that way. Only there's less traffic. And someone is always playing music, wherever you go. Boring stuff, most of it, but at least well-executed. Choral singing is quite popular. And . . . I'm not sure if it's the air or what exactly . . . but it's very easy to forget all the reasons one had to be sad, or lonely, or afraid. You can take a breath and just be really, truly calm. At peace."

Chloe turned her head on her pillow to watch him as he spoke. His gaze was unfocused . . . not imagining. Remembering.

He trailed off in mid-sentence and looked over at Trixie. "And she's out."

And so she was. Chloe extracted her hand from her daughter's hair and reached across her (wincing a little) to switch off the lamp on that side of the bed. Then she snuggled under the blankets and rested her head against Lucifer's shoulder. He obligingly pulled her close, settling his chin on her head.

"Sounds like a nice place," she murmured into his shirt.

"It does get boring after a while. But I have complete faith in our Charlotte's ability to keep the hosts of heaven on their toes."

He smelled so good. And his body was so warm. Not diabolically warm . . . just steady, radiant, human warm. Sandwiched between her daughter and her partner, Chloe could imagine what it was like to take a deep breath in heaven and feel totally, utterly safe.

A touch on her head . . . He was petting her hair as she'd done to Trixie's, letting the gold stands slide through his fingers. "I have to admit, Detective . . . this is not at ALL the threesome I had in mind."

There he was . . . the partner she loved to hate. She snorted. "If you're disappointed, you know where the door is."

"On the contrary. It's almost unsettling, considering everything that's happened today, and the absurd amount of cotton knit fabric you choose to sleep in, and the presence of your spawn . . . but I find myself inexplicably, deliriously happy. I don't think I've ever been quite so happy in my entire existence. Is it the bed? Do you always feel spectacularly happy when sleeping on a cheap innerspring mattress?"

That actually elicited a chuckle, though it felt like a lot of work . . . the warmth and the safety were rapidly shutting down her brain. "We might have to do some testing. Try other mattresses."

"Spectacular idea. Your bed, my bed . . . a charming little villa I know on the Sicilian coast . . . a representative sampling of the hotels in Las Vegas . . ."

She could only manage a "Hmph" this time.

"Detective? Chloe?" He leaned close and whispered in her ear. "Darling?"

"Mmmmm?"

"I can't reach the light if you fall asleep on me like this. I'm trapped."

"Nnngh." She sighed, gathering the presence of mind for one more sentence. "You're the Prince of Darkness. You figure it out."

And then she was gone.


	2. Chapter 2

Lucifer Morningstar had, at one point in his very long existence, been a morning person. Life in Los Angeles had destroyed that, although to be fair, life in Hell had done a lot of the work already. So when Detective Decker's phone sounded a wakeup alarm, he woke, but didn't move.

He'd turned on his side during the night, away from Decker and Trixie, and could hear Decker moving behind his back as she silenced her phone. The blankets rustled as she gently coaxed Trixie out of consciousness. "Hey, baby. Trixie?" The voice was barely above a whisper. "Do you want to go to school today? You don't have to."

Trixie hummed, clearly not awake enough to moan. "Um . . . I . . . I wanna go to school."

"Okay."

First the child, then the mother, eased out of the bed. Lucifer considered getting up, too, but thought better of it. What did he know about preparing a child for a school day? The detective would probably have an easier time of it without him getting underfoot trying to be helpful without any expertise whatsoever. Feeling very virtuous for having given so much thought to such a generous act, he relaxed into the pillow and was asleep again almost at once.

He woke up again when the detective climbed back into the bed. Without any conversation whatsoever, she curled up against him, sighed once into the back of his neck, and fell asleep again.

The warmth of her body, its soft, languid weight against him, sent shivers of delight shooting under his skin. Chloe Decker had looked him in the face yesterday—his _real_ face—and now, barely twelve hours later, she was asleep against his back. He wanted to _do_ something—turn over and capture her, claim her—but, with much more reluctance, he thought better of this plan as well. He wanted this to be simple, sharing her bed. It wasn't. What _was_ simple was his knowledge that she was still physically and emotionally exhausted after three days of no rest, and needed sleep more than she needed anything else in the world right now . . . including him. So he stayed perfectly still, ignoring the sunlight that was teasing at the edges of the thick curtains, and let Chloe sleep against him, and was content.

When he woke for the third time, she was finally starting to wake up of her own volition. The rhythm of her breathing had changed, and she shifted awkwardly, trying to ease back without disturbing him. Lucifer turned over at last, curious and impatient but also full of dread. Was this the moment that she thought better of her exhausted display of trust, and kicked him out of her bed and her home?

She was lying on her side, head still on the pillow, watching him. He settled into a mirrored position. For a long time, neither said anything.

"It is inexpressibly frustrating," said Lucifer at last, "not knowing what it is you want."

"Yeah," Chloe agreed, "I'll bet it is."

She reached a hand across the space between them and passed her fingertips across his forehead, down his temple and around his jawline. The touch wasn't romantic; it wasn't even affectionate. It was exploratory, just like her examination of his other face yesterday. Nevertheless, it made his breath catch in his throat. The scent of her skin was all around him, infused into the sheets, and he could almost taste her as her hand and wrist ghosted across his face.

"I want to be so furious at you," she admitted. "I feel like you've been lying to me."

"I haven't!" Lucifer protested. "I have been telling you the exact truth!"

"Only because you knew I wouldn't believe you!" She pressed her palm against his cheek, as though she were trying to feel through a mask to the flesh beneath. "You could have shown me all this at any time, and you didn't. You let me believe you were crazy when you had the proof with you all the time that you weren't."

"Not . . . exactly." He sighed. Though he was defending himself, he knew full well that there was honesty and then there was _honesty_, and this morning demanded the latter. It was not a comfortable knowledge. "The face has been missing for the better part of a year. Before that, the wings were missing. As you've seen. I did _try_ to show you my true face. I really did."

"I remember," Chloe allowed. "But you had wings then. You could have shown me those. Just the wings would have been enough."

"You wouldn't have understood."

"What kind of pathetic excuse is that? I don't understand _now_."

"No, you don't . . . look, the face vanished and the wings came back, all at once, and I thought, hell, she'll see wings and think 'angel' because _somebody_ up there is trying to force me back into that role, and I didn't want to go, and I didn't want that to be what you saw when you saw all of me. It wouldn't have been real. It wouldn't have been right." He heaved another frustrated sigh. "None of it was right. Back _then_, on the balcony at my place, I tried again to make you understand what I really am, and you said _not to me_. And I thought, damn, I want that to be real, I want it to be enough. I want her to believe whatever she wants to believe as long as she never stops looking at me like that . . ."

She wasn't looking at him _like that_ now. But she _was_ still looking at him.

"And now I suppose I get to find out what I was so frantically wondering when your phone rang. What happens when she realizes? It's all well and good to say _not to me_, but I'm the devil to _everyone_, and all the feelings in the world won't change that, but damn, how I wish they could."

She was still looking at him. Her gaze was searching and careful and unreadable. Her hand was still on his cheek.

"Lucifer," she murmured at last, her voice low and steady, "what is it you truly desire?"

He opened his mouth to answer, then closed it again, almost dazed. It had been a messy enough question to answer when Linda had put it to him, and then there'd been a clear response singing through his nerves—_the Detective, I want her to smile at me and not Pierce, I want her in my arms and not his, I want to WIN_. Now there seemed to be so many answers to choose from . . . serious ones like _freedom _and _justice_ and _you_, frivolous ones like _a shower_ and _whiskey_ and _a blonde-brunette-redhead trio who were all former Olympic gymnasts _. . . but nothing rang through his mind, clear and true and absolute. In an instant, it occurred to him that Detective Decker might find him as frustrating as he found her, and for exactly the same reason: she could never know for certain what it was he really wanted. And, on the heels of that realization, another rang through his head: she might not _know_ what her deepest desire was, any more than he did.

"I hardly know," he admitted at last, when the long silence had made it clear she wasn't going to have pity on him and move on from the question. "But in the last couple of . . . no, in these last few years, I've learned to name a few things that I _don't _desire."

"Tell me."

"What I desire least is for you to be in pain. I've seen it and I hate it. I would do anything . . . absolutely _anything_, you understand . . . to not feel what I feel when I know you're hurting. And after that, what I desire second-least is for you to be happy because of someone who isn't me. Someone you shouldn't trust, which is everyone, because I don't know what any of them will do."

"I don't know what you'll do either, Lucifer."

"Well, I do! I trust me completely. And we're discussing my desires at the moment, not yours."

"Sorry," she said, schooling her face into mock-seriousness. "Continue."

"I shall. The third thing I want least is . . ." He'd rather lost track of the priority list at this point. He stopped a minute to think of what would be almost as bad as seeing the detective coughing up blood in a hospital or laughing at something Pierce had said to her.

"The third thing," he said at last, "would be to be forced out of Los Angeles and back to . . . anywhere else . . . as long as you're here."

Chloe nodded, giving this careful and serious consideration. Then she resettled her head onto the pillow and asked, rather awkwardly, "Is . . . is the devil in love with me?"

The phrasing stung him. She hadn't asked, 'Are _you_ in love with me?", she'd asked, "Is _the devil_." And though he knew they were one and the same, the detective seemed to be sorting them into two discrete entities in her head. _The devil_ and _Lucifer_. The demon face and the human one. The wings and the scars.

He didn't fight her on the distinction; Dad knew she was handling everything as well as she could. Even this grueling conversation was better than Linda's two weeks of silence and isolation, and even that had been much better than what he had a right to expect.

"Yes," he responded. "The devil is in love with you. The devil cannot breathe when you are sad and is drunk on pleasure every time he makes you smile. The devil has never felt like this before, and he is terrified. Being cast out of heaven was a walk in the park compared to this."

"Okay," said Chloe, absorbing this as methodically as if they were sitting in the interrogation room and he'd just told her where he was the night of Sunday the 15th between seven and nine p.m., as well as the names of three people who could confirm it. "Are there . . . I don't know . . . implications?"

"How do you mean, 'implications'?"

"Well, to be perfectly frank, I saw _Rosemary's Baby_ at a sleepover when I was fifteen years old and that movie _still_ gives me nightmares."

It took him a minute to figure out the reference. "_That's _your question? I bare my heart and soul to you and your first thought is _Rosemary's Baby_?"

"Yeah, well, two days ago my major worry was 'What am I gonna tell Pierce? Is this a conflict of interest? Do I have to give him up as a partner if we become involved?', but that was a long time and many dramatic revelations ago. So yes. My first thought is 'If I get pregnant, is it gonna be the spawn of Satan?'. I have many other worries but that's the most pressing."

_Involved_. She had been considering taking him into her bed two days ago, and she was still considering it now. Well, in the metaphorical sense. In the literal sense he was in fact already in her bed. So close and still so far. But it sounded, from her questions and her tone, that there might still be a chance. A slim chance and a long road, but that was immeasurably better than no chance at all.

"No," he answered, doing his best to stay clinical and professional. "We are not . . . reproductively compatible. There is no risk of your becoming the mother of the spawn of Satan. You are the mother of your own spawn, and that is terror enough."

She laughed; Lucifer felt the sound rushing to his head like champagne.

"Okay, next question."

"Lay on, Detective."

"Is there some kind of . . . hidden contract? Like, am I doomed to eternity in Hell if I fall in love with the devil?"

"No. Much as I would love to trap you in my dark realms below by feeding you pomegranate seeds, that story is an entirely different pantheon. Your fate after this life is entirely a measure of the good and evil you've done to you fellow creatures. And honestly I'm not sure I even count. I'm not supposed to be here in the first place, so how could any actions taken either for or against me be counted as admissible evidence in your judgment?"

"Interesting," Chloe mused. Then she reached under her head, grabbed her pillow, and hit him in the face with it.

"Ow!" He shoved the pillow away and chucked it gracelessly back at her. "What was that for?"

"I'm still mad at you," she explained calmly as she returned the pillow to its original position. "Next question."

"This conversation is getting progressively more damaging to my psyche," Lucifer grumbled.

"Yeah, well, that was me yesterday, so fair's fair. Are there looming consequences of . . . anything? Of your being here at all, of our partnership, of what happened yesterday?"

Damn, she was good at ferreting information out of him. "Yes," he admitted. "My being here has been a cascade of consequences, most of them more annoying than dangerous. Our partnership is not explicitly forbidden, because of course I'm not supposed to be out of Hell to begin with so there's no set of rules for what I may and may not do while I am here. But there are rules for the angels. Two rules. The first is that mortality as a whole must never see proof of the existence of the divine. The second is that an angel may never, under any circumstances, kill a human."

Chloe took a moment to absorb this. "I've seen proof," she offered, "and Pierce is dead."

Lucifer nodded. "I'm not terribly concerned about the first. Both Linda and Charlotte have been up to speed on the nature of the universe for some time, and no retribution has been forthcoming from on high. I assume that their discretion has had a great deal to do with that, so I would appreciate it if you didn't do anything stupid like take video of my wings and post it onto YouTube."

"I can probably handle that."

"As for the second . . ." He sighed and shifted uncomfortably. "I don't know. It's a rule I've never broken. But I didn't have any other choice. He was going to kill me. And he did want to die so much."

"Pierce was suicidal?"

"Cain has been suicidal basically for as long as he's been homicidal . . . that is to say, since the beginning of the world. He only began pursuing you because he'd learned that you made me vulnerable. He thought you might be his last chance at death. Then of course everything went to blazes because he decided he was in love with you and didn't want to die anymore, so he started killing people to get his immortality back—"

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Back up. I do what?"

"You make me bleed, Detective; I've told you this!"

"You told it to me in the sixty percent of your blather that I take pains to ignore so I don't have to think about whether you'd be better off in an institution instead of in the precinct with me. Tell me again."

"Your presence makes me vulnerable to harm. I can only bleed when you're there."

"Why?"

"Detective, remember all you've learned about me in the past twenty-four hours, and then comprehend all the import of the phrase when _I _say, 'Hell if I know'."

He could see her thinking about this, weighing all the times she'd seen him hurt with all the times she'd seen him slip out of situations that should have killed him. Without her appearing to notice, her hand slipped under the neck of her t-shirt to find the misshapen bullet that she wore there. "I _shot _you!"

"Yes, and I swear, I thought it was going to be fine. I was far more surprised than you were."

"How close do you have to be to me? What's the radius?"

"I've only a vague idea. You've been extremely uncooperative about standing still so I can do proper testing."

"But your wings. Those were already cut off when we met."

"There are certain blades that can harm immortal creatures. Maze carries a couple."

"And is one of those blades in an evidence bag at the precinct right now?"

"Yes."

"And were those blades in my house, _with my daughter_?"

"Yes, but that makes no difference. The blades aren't any more dangerous to a human than any other sharp knife. Besides, with Maze living here, Trixie was as safe as any child could possibly be. Very few immortal things will cross Maze."

Chloe sighed, and the corner of her mouth twitched up in a shadow of a smile. "I did think, a few times, that Maze was the roommate from hell."

"Your instincts are good, Detective. I've always said that."

The smile blossomed for a moment, and Lucifer smiled involuntarily in response. His stomach tensed deliciously, as though he'd tucked his wings and gone into a freefall from a thousand feet up.

The hand on his cheek eased its investigative pressure, and suddenly her fingertips were tracing the line of his jaw. He froze, as though she were a butterfly that he feared to frighten away. The thought tempted him to laugh again—Detective Decker, with nerves of steel, a butterfly—but he didn't dare to breathe.

"Can I trust you?" she asked, her voice scarcely above a whisper. "You're the devil, but you've never lied to me. Never once. So tell me the truth. Can I trust you?"

The truth. He had to tell the truth. It was forced upon him, a facet of his very nature. But there was one loophole which he had exploited freely, almost since the moment he'd landed in LA, and if she were truly to trust him, he had to lay that bare as well.

"I've told you uncountable times, I can't lie. That's not . . . completely true. As Linda has tried to drill into my head, there's one kind of lie I can get away with. I can lie to myself. And if I believe the lie, I can repeat it to anyone. So I can only tell you what I utterly believe to be the truth: your trust is the most precious gift I've ever received, and the thought of losing it makes me wish I were back in Hell, already paying the price for my betrayal. I cannot conceive of a reason for me to violate your trust."

Chloe nodded, her eyes never leaving his. Then she leaned across the space between them and carefully, deliberately, settled her mouth against his lips.

Lucifer vaguely heard himself producing an inarticulate, graceless sound in the back of his throat—more a cry of relief from some agonizing pain than a recognizable expression of pleasure or joy. He fumbled through the blankets to grab her and pull her close, delving desperately into her mouth in his rush to feel her, taste her, make this all real and not another lust-fueled fakeout nightmare. He held her firmly against his body and rolled with her until he lay on his back with her spread on top of him, his surrender complete and unconditional. The kiss was deep and long and gentle and filled him with the vague sense that everything in the whole world was wonderful. She tasted perfect. She tasted _real_.

She pulled back from him after he'd lost all track of time, and the crushing sense of loss was tempered by the pleasure of looking at her. His fingers found her face now and roved frantically over it, memorizing with touch what he'd long ago memorized by sight. He'd shared his bed with many women more beautiful—this was LA, after all—but never with one he craved looking at so much.

"We have a lot to do today," she told him, her voice steady and professional, "and I still feel like I am _drowning_ in information. But I want you with me while I figure it out. My partner."

Her hair was escaping her ponytail and falling in loose gold hanks around her face; Lucifer indulged himself in combing it back and tucking it behind her ear. "I am, in this as in all else, entirely at your disposal, Detective."

She nodded, moved to sit up, hesitated, addressed him again. "One more clarification: while we are together, I expect fidelity from you. No sex with anyone else until this thing between us is ended. Okay?"

Lucifer opened his mouth to protest the slight on his character, thought better of it, and nodded. "Your terms are acceptable."

"All right." She sat up, straddling his thighs in a most delightful manner. "We've got to get to the precinct. I'm surprised nobody's called."

She leaned over to the far nightstand to grab and check her phone. Lucifer did likewise, in the process knocking to the floor the light bulb he'd extracted from the lamp as an alternative to reaching the switch.

"Nothing," said Chloe.

"We should all be so lucky," Lucifer muttered, scrolling through the dozen or so missed calls from Ella and Linda. Fortunately, he'd had the presence of mind to silence the thing, lest the scene on his balcony repeat itself. He was more than willing to let this new liaison proceed at the pace Chloe set, but he'd be damned if he was going to be cockblocked by a phone again.

She leaned over him to examine his phone's screen. "Ugh. We are _so_ late. And my hair still smells like gunpowder."

"I rather like the scent of gunpowder in your hair, but your point is taken. And much as I would . . . and, I trust, _will_ . . . enjoy joining you in the shower, your facilities are not quite large enough to accommodate . . ." He gestured vaguely over his shoulder. "And they are in rank and bloody need of a rinse. I had better head back to Lux to clean up."

"Meet you at the precinct, then?"

"And how will you get there, when that is where you left your car?"

"I'll grab an Uber. If you have to drive to Lux, get changed, and drive all the way back here, we won't get to the precinct before Ella's shift finishes."

"Well, if you're going to rob me of the pleasure of picking you up, at least indulge me in dinner tonight."

She hesitated. "I've got to check on Dan. Depending on what kind of shape he's in . . ."

Lucifer rolled his eyes in a deeply uncharitable gesture for which he instantly felt guilty. Then he followed Chloe off the bed, snagged her around the back of the neck, and pulled her in to kiss her again. "Don't underestimate my persistence, Detective."

She grinned. "And don't underestimate my desire, Mr. Morningstar."

His entire brain exploded inside his skull, but she was already out of his grasp and across the hall into the bathroom.


	3. Chapter 3

"Here," said Chloe, offering Lucifer her cupped hands.

Lucifer, by reflex, cupped his own hands under hers. She poured brusquely into them an odd jumble of objects: a sewing pin with a large red plastic head, a cigarette lighter, an alcohol swab, a piece of sidewalk chalk.

She immediately took back the pin and the lighter. "Clean your finger," she ordered, nodding at the alcohol swab.

"Which one?" Lucifer asked in bewilderment, watching as she flicked the lighter to life and held the pin in its flame. "And why?"

"We're gonna do some tests. So one on your left hand. Whichever."

"I do not like the direction this is taking," Lucifer grumbled as he tucked the chalk into his pocket, then tore open the alcohol swab and scrubbed it over his left middle finger.

He was starting to feel genuinely nervous. Chloe had known who and what he was for roughly two and a half days, and so far . . . well, so far, it had been all right. She had alternated between plowing ahead with what needed to be done, focusing on work with resolute professionalism, and peppering him with clear, blunt questions that were leaving him frazzled and off balance. After nearly three days of telling her about the nature of the universe and all of his most intimate and personal feelings, he was feeling rather like a landed fish.

When both his finger and the pin were as clean as they could be made, Chloe handed the pin back to him and led the way outside to the street in front of her home. It was a gray, bright Los Angeles afternoon, her first day off since everything had gone down.

"All right," she announced as he joined her on the sidewalk, "Where should we start? Ten feet? Less?"

"Ten at least." He took a few strides away from her, then turned back to be sure he still had her attention. She was watching him with folded arms, her gaze professional and impassive.

He dug the pin into his finger, hissing a little more than he needed to just in case she was inclined to feel sorry for him. Bright red blood welled up.

"All right," said Chloe. "Go another five steps and try again."

"This _does_ hurt," he reminded her as he did as she instructed.

"You had Maze cut your wings off, _multiple times_. I think you can handle it."

He had a good dozen tiny wounds on his finger, and he was about halfway along the next block, when the pin refused to break through his skin. Grinning, he looked up and shouted back to her. "That's it!"

"Yeah?"

He held his hands above his head and stabbed the pin into his finger where she could see. Down the street, she squinted, then stepped closer to get a better look. The pin immediately sank into his flesh.

"OW! Bloody hell, Detective!"

"Sorry!" Chloe shouted back.

Lucifer retreated a step and gritted his teeth as he yanked the pin out. Blood was now threatening to drip on the pavement, so he extracted the pocket square from his jacket and pressed it into the myriad wounds. Then he paused, thought, looked behind him at the blocks and blocks of sidewalk disappearing into the distance, and turned back towards Chloe.

"Why didn't we just start somewhere out there and work our way in?" he demanded.

She cupped her hands around her mouth to be sure he heard her reply. "I'm still mad at you!"


	4. Chapter 4

Chloe, on waking, felt the ambiguous worry that is the burden of a parent who's gotten enough sleep: the concern that her feeling of rejuvenation and calm meant that she'd slept through something important.

Disoriented, she raised her head from the pillow and swatted her hair inaccurately away from her eyes. No, she was off today, and Trixie was at Dan's . . . she was sore and languid, and warm California sunshine was streaming through the enormous windows of Lucifer's loft.

Last night came back to her, making her smile. It was not their first night together, nor yet the second, but everything still felt new and delightful.

The bed was empty beside her, but she could hear water running. It had stopped by the time she'd slid out from between the sheets and found her panties and t-shirt. The bra she ignored; it was suspended on a catch in the stonework that decorated his room, so high that she'd probably need to stand on a chair to get it down.

She wandered into the bathroom, combing her tousled hair back off her face, and let herself stand smiling in the doorway. Lucifer, still steaming, stood at the vanity brushing his teeth. He had a towel hooked around his hips, and his snowy white wings stood out resplendent from his back as beads of water slipped down the feathers to the floor.

Here she was, in his home, in the hazy sweet hours of the morning, and Lucifer could walk about unashamed with his wings exposed for her to stare at. The vulnerability, the trust, made her feel giddy and a little drunk. He felt _that _safe with her. And she felt . . . almost that safe with him. It was like being on a roller coaster, having complete faith in the track and the harness, but still getting a thrill out of the dangerous rush of movement as it dropped. She was sleeping with the devil. She was sleeping with her partner. It was odd, how she could feel simultaneously completely out of her depth and totally secure in her decisions.

She stole up behind him and fitted her body against his back, slinging her arms around his neck and enjoying the warm press of his wings against her sides. The smooth curve of the wing bases, where the scars had once lain like reversed parentheses across his back, now cradled her perfectly from armpit to hip. In the mirror, she saw Lucifer grin around his toothbrush. He closed the wings against his back, cocooning her in feathers and a warm, familiar, heady smell of expensive cologne and some kind of sweet smoke-somewhere between campfire, pipe tobacco, and nag champa incense.

"Do you have to switch faces," she inquired, "to brush your devil teeth?"

She couldn't seem to stop asking him stupid questions. Everything from "How did the Garden of Eden thing go down, really?" to "Do your feathers need preening?" But Lucifer answered every one, despite periodic grumbling about her insatiable curiosity.

He bent over, pulling a little out of her grasp, to spit into the sink so he could talk. "I never really eat anything with them. And they're tougher than human teeth."

"Do they have devil dentists?"

"Oh, first I get a devil therapist, and now I need a devil dentist?"

"Just worried about your oral health, that's all."

He rinsed the toothbrush and set it back in its holder, then wrapped a hand around her forearm where it rested on his chest. "I promise I will brush them, to make you happy. But later. I know my face makes you uncomfortable."

Chloe winced a little. "I'm sorry."

"Don't be, Detective. Unsettling humans is rather what that face was designed for. And it doesn't come very easily anyway, on mornings like these. I find it . . . difficult . . . to be my worst self when you're here."

The admission was tender and hesitant, and Chloe couldn't think of a response. Instead, she changed the subject. She combed her free hand through his still-wet hair, enjoying the feel of the strands between her fingers and the way his body slumped with pleasure at her touch.

"Got a couple of grays now," she observed. "Police work will do that to you."

"I have _WHAT_?"

Lucifer lunged for the mirror, jerking out of her embrace and yanking his wings back into invisibility. His hands went to his head, combing frantically where she'd been petting him.

Chloe laughed, entertained by his childish display of vanity but also a little unsettled by the force of his reaction. "Lucifer, calm down! We all get them. They look distinguished. They're beautiful."

"We don't _all_ get them, Detective. _I _don't get them. I'm immortal! If I were going to go gray, I'd have done so long before . . ." He trailed off as he found the few silver strands, still only visible to a very close observer. "I'm going gray," he muttered, thunderstruck.

"Welcome to the club," Chloe informed him.

He turned to face her, one hand still tangled in the offending hair. "I'm . . . I'm _aging_."

Chloe raised her eyebrows, her arms crossed over her chest to telegraph her annoyance. "You're having a midlife crisis _now_? Right now?"

"This is not a midlife crisis, Detective. This is a _mortality _crisis! Don't you see? Thousands and thousands of years, and now . . ."

He trailed off, looking her up and down, his mouth slightly open in horror.

"And now _you_," he finished. "Good grief, Detective. I knew you made me bleed, but I never really thought about . . " He ran a hand over his face, as though to check it was still there. "I'm going to die," he choked out at last. "Not just _I might die_, bullets and whatnot . . . as long as I'm with you, I'm aging, which means I don't just _might die_, I _will_ die! In, what? I don't know. How old does Time think I am now? I can't have more than . . . fifty years, maybe?"

Chloe, who had been opening her mouth to take another jab at him, caught herself. The panic in his eyes was genuine. That wasn't too unusual; Lucifer had a tendency to overreaction, even on those occasions when what he thought was going on actually _was_ what was going on. The pair of them had faced death together on more than one occasion, and she knew she could trust him to stay calm when staring down the muzzle of a gun. But maybe death by old age was different. Particularly when you'd lived thousands and thousands of years and never had to contemplate the idea that life was finite. Or, at least, that it _might_ be finite. As long as he was within a city block of her.

There were no ticking clocks in Lucifer's loft, but she felt that she could almost hear one. Or, rather, she could see Lucifer hearing one as he looked at her.

She took a hesitant step forward, wanting to touch him, to soothe and tease him out of it, but he flinched back against the vanity.

It was his flinch that really made her get it. As long as she stood in the same room, she was killing him, second by irretrieveable second, and he was terrified.

Chloe turned and retreated, in the long-legged, urgent, determined walk that she had learned as a beat cop. Where were her pants? She stumbled into them, then grabbed her jacket, zipping it closed over her chest and giving her bra up for lost. She vaguely remembered losing her shoes as they'd come out of the elevator . . . there was one by the bar, next to her overturned purse, and the other had slid under the piano. She had to go on hands and knees to retrieve it. When she bobbed up, Lucifer was standing in the bedroom doorway, still staring at her, one hand holding the towel that was threatening to slide free. "Detective . . ." he started, then stopped, unable to decide if he wanted to tell her to stay or go.

Chloe dropped the sandal and toed it around until she could stuff her foot in it. "You can call me," she told him, pulling her hair out of her coat collar and mashing the elevator button.

"Chloe . . ."

Chloe swallowed the unidentified wave of emotion that was trying to force its way up her throat. "Thank you for _everything_," she told him. Just in case it was the last thing she got to say to him. Just in case their partnership was done because her very presence was slowly poisoning him.

The elevator doors finally opened, and she escaped behind them.

She could breathe. She was still breathing. What should she do? Who should she call? Not Maze, Dan, or Ella . . . Linda. Linda would know what to do. She fished out her phone and struggled to dig the therapist's number out of it.

She was halfway across the club floor when Linda finally picked up. "Chloe, can it wait?"

Chloe started to laugh, found she was going to cry instead, and choked it all back. "Lucifer already called, didn't he?"

"You know I can't tell you that."

"Well, tell him to put some pants on."

"I'll take that under advisement."

Chloe hung up and headed out of the building to her car. She couldn't think right now. It was a bad idea to try thinking about this without Linda to help her sort them out. She had to do something else, something useful. She headed for the precinct.

It was only minimally active on a Sunday morning, and Chloe mostly escaped notice with her tousled hair and braless wardrobe. She settled in with reports and documentation and lost herself in it.

She only looked up when someone perched on the edge of her desk.

"Your phone's dead," said Linda.

Chloe blinked, dragging her thoughts out of the DV murder-suicide they'd been buried in, and reached in confusion for her phone. It was indeed dead as a doornail. She hadn't plugged it in last night, what with . . . well, she hadn't, and her deliberately ignoring it had let it die in silence.

"Oh, gosh . . . I'm sorry! You didn't have to come all the way out here . . ."

Linda shrugged. "Well, _a_ _client _kept me on the phone for three hours, so my weekend was pretty much shot."

Chloe half-smiled in sympathy. "Sounds like he's pretty freaked out."

"It does sound like that, doesn't it?"

"What did he say?"

"Chloe, for God's sake, I am _trying_ to take my job seriously . . ."

"Sorry, sorry."

Linda snagged a chair from a nearby desk and sat down. "So let's talk about you. Are _you_ freaked out?"

Chloe sat back from her desk while she fished for her charger and plugged it into her phone. "I really don't even know. I mean, I'm a cop. I'm a _homicide detective_. I get that I'm mortal. I get that I'll die an old lady if I'm lucky. And I've discharged my weapon in the line of duty, so I know what it is to take responsibility for someone else's death. But is it the same thing?"

"Do you think it is?" asked Linda, settling her glasses more comfortably on her nose.

Chloe leaned her elbows on her desk, tenting her fingers and leaning her forehead against them. "Say I kill a man," she proposed. "Might be manslaughter, might be murder, might be self-defense, whatever. I kill him. But he would have died anyway. Eventually."

"M-hm," said Linda noncommittally.

"And that's enough of a crime. But what if I killed an immortal being? One that would never, never die if not for me. Isn't that worse? A life that would have gone on forever, and I just . . ." Her fingers clenched involuntarily in response to the thought of the violence of it.

"But in this case, you wouldn't actually be killing him," Linda offered. "You'd just be changing an immortal existence to a mortal one. Something else would eventually kill him-If you exercised restraint, that is. So does that change the question?"

"You're asking _me_? You're the therapist!"

Linda rolled her eyes and took off her glasses. "Chloe, you may find this hard to believe, but they didn't offer a course on the ethics of immortality in my doctoral program. I am making this up as I go along. So you tell me: is transforming an immortal existence into a mortal existence the same thing killing? And whether it is or not, are there circumstances, like the killing of a mortal person, where that action might be justified?"

Chloe flopped back in her chair and wrapped her arms around herself, trying to organize her thoughts, trying to stay objective, failing. "I feel so selfish," she admitted. "I was so happy. I woke up this morning and I thought, this is perfect, this is so good, this is what life is supposed to be like . . ."

"Mmm," said Linda, a small smile teasing at the corner of her mouth. Chloe laughed; she had forgotten that Linda had experienced that feeling long before she had.

"And I just want to keep that feeling, but if I do, every time he looks at me he'll see the Grim Reaper coming for him. And I don't want to _care_, because we're all gonna die, we suck it up and deal with it and live happy lives and do our jobs and . . ." She threw her hands haphazardly out, taking in the empty precinct and, metonymously, her whole life. "But is it even fair for me to ask that of him? Nobody's asking it of me. I don't have a choice. He does."

"Yes, he does," Linda agreed. "And you neither have a say in, nor any responsibility for, that choice. All you have to decide is what _you _are going to do, what _you_ can live with. Can you stand being the Grim Reaper for the rest of your life, if that's the cost of continuing this relationship?"

Chloe stopped, thought, took a deep breath. "Trixie's going to die," she observed. It sounded like a nonsequiteur, but Linda followed the logic.

"Yes, someday she will."

"I brought her to life. Dan and I. She wouldn't exist if it wasn't for us. We gave her a life, we created her out of nothing but our own bodies, and someday . . . someday, none of that will matter. Someday she'll just stop being alive, no matter how much I love her." She laughed a little at herself. "That bothers me so much more than thinking about it happening to me."

"That's understandable. You're a mother. You've participated in the creation of human life. It stands to reason that you'd be uncomfortable with the thought of that life being destroyed, particularly after all the work you put in."

Chloe chuckled. "_So_ much work. I wonder if Lucifer's mother feels the same way."

"Lucifer's mother is a very . . . odd . . . woman. Best to leave her out of this." Linda leaned in. "Chloe, you gave Trixie something invaluable. You gave her mortality. You provided the chance for her to experience this world, and learn, and grow, and love, and yes, someday die. That was a _good_ gift. And in a way, that's what you're offering Lucifer as well. A mortal life, and a good one, surrounded by people who love him and opportunities to grow. I don't know if that's necessarily a _better_ thing than immortality, but it is a _good_ thing. You don't have to be ashamed of offering it to him, or of wanting him to take it. That kind of life is the best life you know, and the greatest gift you have to offer."

Chloe nodded, acknowledging that Linda's clear, deliberate, well-trained mind had argued her panicked one into submission. Breathing felt a little easier.

Linda reached out and gripped her knee in friendly solidarity. "Hey, Chloe. I can't tell you what his choices will be. But keep your phone charged, okay?"

"Okay," Chloe agreed. "Thanks, Linda."

"Just doing my job," Linda quipped as she stood up. "My weird, weird job."

After Linda left, Chloe wrapped up what she'd been working on and went home. The place was quiet with Trixie at Dan's, but she could stand the quiet now. She showered and changed, threw in some laundry and sat down to pay bills. Normal work. Needful work. _Life_.

Maybe not the life that Lucifer wanted, but a good life nonetheless. Nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing to fear.

Her phone buzzed just as the last traces of sunset were fading away outside.

_Come to me, Detective. Please?_

She came to him.

Downstairs, the club was its usual weekend madhouse, but Lucifer wasn't anywhere in the throng. She maneuvered between dancers to the elevator, returning the nod of the security guard who had known her by sight for many years now.

Upstairs in the loft, everything was dim and calm. The only sound was the piano.

Lucifer sat at the keys, his long fingers teasing across them with an intricacy that made her non-musician's mind spin. He looked up as she walked in, but his hands never faltered, changing the tune and the key with smooth grace that belied the improvisation. She recognized the new melody: _They Can't Take That Away From Me_. Romantic, but ambiguous.

He was dying. She'd walked into the same room with him and now his clock was ticking again, restarted by her presence.

She went to stand behind him on the piano bench, watching his hands coax the melancholy, jazzy tune out of the strings.

"This was one of the first things I did when I got here," he informed her. "Sign up for piano lessons."

"What, devils don't just instinctively know how to play?"

"Not a bit of it. Lessons every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon, from Mrs. Rodriguez in Montebello."

She imagined him surrendering his dignity enough to awkwardly fumble through scales and finger exercises and _Chopsticks_, and smiled. She took a seat next to him on the bench, so that he had to lean over her a little to reach the low notes.

Chloe combed through her memory to drag out the lyrics. She'd heard this song before, but never really paid attention. Hesitantly, she joined in at the bridge. "We may never, never meet again, on the bumpy road to love . . ."

Lucifer joined her, his voice steadying hers, then took over when she lost track of the words on the last verse. The piano chimed out a final flourish, then fell silent.

Chloe found she couldn't look at him. Or at the piano, which felt like the same thing.

Lucifer sighed, his fingers still resting on the last chord. "I am quite terrified, Detective," he admitted carefully.

"Of what?"

"Of so many things. Age, and disease, and pain, and finally having to be judged for my deeds . . ."

"You don't have to experience any of those things. I don't have any right to ask you to."

"And then I thought, well, I can live forever, if I want. Here, in this penthouse apartment above a nightclub. And I can play the piano until the keys rot under my fingers. I can do whatever I like. All those things I wanted to do when I came here. All I have to do is _not_ call Chloe. Not go over to the precinct to see what cases are on order. Not be there for her when she's in danger. Not find her underthings hanging off my bedroom wall."

That got a laugh.

Her laugh coaxed an answering smile out of him; he didn't seem to be able to help it. "That terrifies me more," he admitted. "I find myself quite unable to bear the thought of my bedroom wall without your brassiere hanging off it. My pillows without strands of your hair caught in the fabric. My days without cases to solve. My phone without a text from you. I can't bear it. I won't. Living forever in this apartment, knowing I could be with you and I'm not, that I'm squandering not just my limitless time, but the little time that _you _have? _That_'s hell. Trust me. And so I figured, if I am someday going to die, and be judged like a mortal and punished for all eternity, well, I've got no reason to give Dad a head-start. I won't torture myself like that. Not when I've got a chance at fifty or so years of happiness first."

"Fifty or so years," she repeated, contemplating what a starkly limited window that was. "Think that'll be enough?"

"Not remotely."

"We'd better not waste any of it, then."

Lucifer grinned, the familiar joyful wickedness filling his face again, and Chloe kissed him, and with admirable alacrity she found herself laid out across the top of the piano, not wasting a moment.


	5. Chapter 5

***  
A note to my readers: First, thank you all for reviews and comments! I haven't published in a long while, and forgot how much I loved the synergistic feedback of writing and reviews.

Second: I am writing at the moment just to let my mind play, so these chapters are more a series of moments than a unified narrative, and the time jumps between them are variable. This chapter is happening maybe six or seven years after the last, and I felt like I needed to specify that explicitly for this particular moment. Thanks!—Seri

"Detective!"

Lucifer was in high spirits as he let himself in Chloe's front door. It was odd, in a way, to feel so chipper after a night spent in his bed alone. But the quiet and the unusual coolness had been a piquant reminder of how much better his life was than he had any right for it to be. He was therefore filled to bursting with high spirits and excellent coffee, and was ready to sweep Chloe off to the precinct and solve some murders.

"Detective!" he called again, letting his keys fall into the dish on the entrance table. Hers were there, too, so she had to be here. But there was no answer.

"Detective?" She'd said she wasn't feeling great and was going to make an early night of it, so she had to be well-rested and awake by now. "Chloe?"

Finally, a response: a faint and inarticulate moan.

A thousand horrible possibilities flashed through Lucifer's fertile imagination. Had she been attacked, and injured? Had she been attacked and left the injured attacker somewhere on the floor of her home? Or was she tangled in her sheets with another lover and moaning in satisfaction? Had she been out drinking all night and was waking to a hangover?

He found her in the bathroom.

She was curled on the cold tile floor, with a pillow under her head and a blanket bunched over her body but for one protruding leg. Her face was pale and her eyes were bloodshot, and a sheen of half-dried sweat gleamed on her neck and brow. The small room was heavy with the sour reek of vomit, and the light was off.

He turned it on immediately, by reflex, and Chloe moaned again, turning her face into the pillow. He instantly shut it back off and knelt next to her on the floor. "What on earth have you been doing to yourself?" he demanded, politely trying not to flinch at the smell.

"Nnngh," Chloe groaned. "Puking."

"What, all night?"

She cautiously extracted a hand from the blanket and tipped it back and forth, indicating _more or less_.

"Why, for goodness' sake?"

This earned a half-opened eye. "Because stomach flu, Lucifer! Why do you think?"

Lucifer shrugged. "Extreme sport of some kind? But that's beside the point. You, Detective, are clearly deathly ill. But not to worry! I'm here now." He looked around the bathroom. "Now, the first things we'll need are one of those pink rubber bags they put ice in and a glass thermometer, like on television. Where do you keep them?"

Chloe groaned.

"I'll find them. Also chicken soup. I'll call the Jewish deli and have them deliver. What else do sick humans need? Aloe vera? Or was it Vick's? Possibly both. Are they sold as a pre-mixed lotion of some kind?"

She turned her head up a little, sighing. "What I need," she grumbled carefully, "is for you to take Trixie to school."

"What, she's still here?"

"In her room. She's late. It's . . ." She reached vaguely toward the counter where her phone was sitting, then gave up. "Late."

"But Detective, I couldn't possibly leave your side in your hour of need! We're going to have _such _fun. I'll need a roll of bandages and a hot-water bottle."

"LUCIFER!" From somewhere in the depths of her soul, Chloe found the fortitude to prop herself up on one elbow and shout at him properly. "TAKE. TRIXIE. TO. SCHOOL. NOW."

Lucifer regarded her with his head cocked like a curious bird. "Your fuse is much shorter when you're sick."

"Do it NOW, or I swear to God I will upchuck on your clean shirt, on purpose."

"No need to bring my parents into this. I'm going." He handed her phone to her and beat a swift retreat.

Trixie's bedroom door was closed. Lucifer knocked, waited four seconds, got impatient, and barged in.

Trixie, who was sprawled sideways across her bed, yanked her headphones off her ears and glared with more than usual teenage vehemence. "_What_, Lucifer?"

"Well, how do you like that?" Lucifer retorted. "I come to offer comfort and succor, and every female in the house attempts to bite my head off. I am instructed to take you to school."

Trixie produced a groan very similar to those of her incapacitated mother and rolled off the bed. "Gimme a minute."

It was more like ten minutes before she emerged, slouching and scowling, and followed Lucifer out to his car. When he pulled out of the driveway, she scoffed in disbelief. "Not _that _way. I'm in high school now?" She phrased it as a question, challenging his recollection of so basic a fact.

"Are you? How unpleasant. Well, soonest begun, soonest over, I suppose." He made a very illegal U-turn and headed off in accordance with her directions.

Other than dictating turns, Trixie was silent for the entire drive.

By the time they pulled into the full parking lot of the high school, Lucifer was thoroughly discomfited. He killed the engine and pulled off his sunglasses. "Now, look here, spawn. You've always been nauseatingly enthusiastic for education. Why the reluctance on this particular morning? Are you ill as well?"

"No," Trixie muttered.

"Then what is it?"

Trixie sighed and looked over at him—_over_, Lucier suddenly realized, not _up_. When had she gotten so tall?

"If I tell you," she said carefully, "you have to promise not to tell Mom. _Or_ Dad."

"Well, I'm not going to _lie_, of course, but I can at least promise to not bring the subject up if they don't ask."

She sighed, looked at her knees, fidgeted in the seat, turned her phone over in her fingers, flinched, and spat it out. "I was at a party on Friday, and there was this guy, and . . . and we hooked up. And last night Lucy called and said Magdalena told her that Tobias told _her_ that he . . . the guy, not Tobias . . . has told all his friends that I'm a slut."

Lucifer stared at her. "A _what_?"

She squirmed and didn't answer.

"Let me see if I've got this right," Lucifer clarified. "You and this young man engaged in what I assume to be entirely consensual sexual relations, which, good for you, by the way, and four days later he proceeds to denigrate you to his colleagues as though a willing and enthusiastic bedfellow were a _bad_ thing to be?"

Trixie nodded.

"And now you are afraid to go to school because you anticipate harassment and shaming based on the word of a young man upon whom you bestowed the courtesy of your time and attention?"

Another nod.

Lucifer, all but gobsmacked, sat back to try and wrap his head around this. Finally he asked, "And how was he?"

Trixie sniffed and gaped at him. "Huh?"

"How _was _he? How was your experience? Is he a lover of consideration or skill?"

"You can't ask me that!"

"Of course I can. I'm the devil. I can ask you anything I like. So, how was it?"

Trixie opened her mouth, closed again, shook her head in bewilderment, shrugged. "I mean, it didn't really hurt, very much, or anything . . ."

"_Didn't hurt_?" Lucifer repeated, aghast. "_Very much_? That's the best you can say of him, that he _didn't hurt you very much_?" He turned in his seat to face Trixie as best he could. "Listen, Decker Offspring. I don't know what they think they are teaching you in this nauseatingly boring building, but they have clearly overlooked one or two salient points. Let me enlighten you. Sex is supposed to be _fun_. At _minimum_. Ideally, it involves a higher plane of consciousness and a sensation of pleasant metaphorical explosion, but even in the less-than-ideal conditions of inexperience and lack of privacy, there should at _least_ be an honest effort to please one's partner, and possibly a fair amount of healthy laughter. But this . . . _cad_ . . . having failed in his duty to provide you with even a minimally pleasant experience, seeks to cover his disgrace by degrading _you_? It is _insupportable_."

Seemingly in spite of herself, Trixie laughed. "It's not actually that bad . . ."

"It _is_," Lucifer insisted. "And the worst bit is, he fails to realize just how spectacularly he has set himself up for humiliation. He has just provoked to anger the one person with firsthand experience of his sexual incompetence. A person who might have been inclined to polite discretion if he'd behaved like a gentleman, but who now has no reason whatsoever to withhold the account of his idiocy from the entire school. Go forth, Trixie Decker Whatever-Your-Other-Last-Name-Is, and laugh at _slut_, and gleefully recount to your friends and colleagues how sex with him was a complete and utter waste of your time. I doubt many other young people will be enthused by the prospect of some lackluster humping followed by character defamation. Well," he held up a hand to amend his statement. "There may be some who find that sort of thing enjoyable, and for the lad's sake I hope he finds one someday, if that's all the pleasure he's capable of providing."

Trixie was still laughing. "Lucifer, you are so weird . . ." She shook her head and grinned. "But so helpful."

"So your mother has informed me many times. Now go," he ordered, reaching across her to open the door. "If the situation becomes fraught, I am more than happy to employ the desire-trick, or in extremis even the devil-face, but I have full confidence in your ability to best so paltry an opponent. Oh, you don't have food, do you?" He fished out his wallet, extracted a credit card, and passed it to her. "Treat your friends. Celebrate this lackluster beginning to what I fully expect to be a long and happy sexual maturity."

She saluted him with the card, slammed the door, and headed into the school with a spring in her step that had been noticeably absent when she'd left the house.

Lucifer considered the conversation on his way back to Chloe's, stopping for chicken soup en route. He found his partner exactly where he'd left her, surrounded by evidence of a fresh round of sickness and quite unconscious. She woke when he picked her up, blanket and all, and grumbled vaguely as her head lolled against his shoulder. "'S Trixie okay?"

"Better than," Lucifer informed her as he slid her into bed. "You know, Detective, in addition to being a first-rate law enforcement officer and an excellent actress, I do believe the evidence indicates you have acquitted yourself quite well as a parent. Trixie," he insisted, using her actual name for what might have been the first time in his life as he settled a pillow under Chloe's head, "is going to be absolutely fine."


	6. Chapter 6

Lucifer hated this hill. He hated it more every time he climbed it.

It made everything hurt more than it did already, the relentless incline, the unreliable grass. It taxed muscles that had very little left to give and drew aching, grating protests from joints that had long since lost their cartilage. And of course she'd been so pleased with it. "We'll have a view," she'd said, like that mattered. Like there was any 'we' in the question at all.

"I'm still mad at you," he informed her as the ground finally leveled out under his feet. As he reached her, he steadied himself on his own feet for a moment to whack her soundly with the edge of his black-and-gold walking stick.

Her response was always the same, carved neatly and unsentimenally in granite. _Capt. Chloe Decker_, and those damn dates.

He'd wanted to put something else, some word of praise, some proclamation of what she _meant_ in the world, but she'd rolled her eyes and shut him up. "I want to earn it," she'd told him. "I don't want to dictate what people _should _feel about me. I get the legacy I earn, and whatever that is . . ." She shrugged. "My name's enough."

"The _view_," he griped at her. "You wanted a _view_, and now I've got to drag myself up this entire damn hill like Sisyphus for the rest of eternity."

Carefully, he bent . . . not far, for he'd long ago left behind the ability to stand completely upright . . . and pulled the dead bundle of flowers from the vase set in front of the headstone. In their place he left a fresh arrangement of snapdragons, all bright yellows and reds against the mixed green and brown of the drought-taxed grass.

"Well," he observed at length, "You'll be happy to know that Lex's got into that law school she wanted. She was shrieking when she told me, in an extremely undignified fashion. It's a good thing the admittance committee couldn't see her or they'd have pitched her straight out again. But Trixie and Min are both fit to burst, of course. Trixie ordered a cake with the acceptance letter printed onto it, and quite tasty, too. Min tried to lecture me about the sugar and diabetes and then muttered to Trixie when she thought I wasn't listening that I'd put myself into a coma. If only, eh?"

He smiled just thinking about it. A coma. Wouldn't that be nice. He'd had his immortality back for four months now, and it was absolutely miserable. Everything hurt. So many of his old friends were gone beyond, one way or another, and though it was quite entertaining to watch the young people launching into lives of their own, it did make one feel one's age. The age that one would be forever and ever, now that one's partner was gone . . .

He felt his throat tense up and his chest constrict. Oh, hell no, he wasn't going to cry _again_ . . . why did mourning involve some much damned _crying_?

He struggled to breathe through it, to keep the outburst at bay. Crying hurt, not crying hurt, coming up here hurt, _not _coming up here hurt . . .

"I'm . . . still mad at you," he choked out, trying to be self-deprecating while he waited for the fit to pass. "Why . . . in hell . . . did you have to go _first_? You couldn't have waited . . . a few months? I don't suppose it matters really . . . but at least Hell would be _different_. And I might be able to properly stand up. And I could see Maze on occasion. And Min wouldn't be fussing about _diabetes_. And I know what you're thinking . . . wouldn't that just leave _you_ decrepit and alone instead? Well, yes. But at this point, I am _more_ than willing . . . to throw you under the bus."

He imagined her dismissive eyeroll, and smiled in spite of himself. His heart hurt. It was all so damnably _literal_.

"Calderon . . . passed his exams," he panted, trying to get back on topic. "So there's another . . . baby detective . . . for you. That's, what, five now? I wrote them all down the other day, but I've lost the paper, and of course my memory is gone, so I hope you're taking notes." He took a few choppy breaths; they were getting easier.

"I miss you," he said, and his voice broke on the verb. "I scarcely know how to function. I talk like you're there to shout at me, and you don't. Lexie and Scott are constantly calling and visiting to keep me distracted, but how long can one stay distracted from the knowledge that one's partner is gone?"

He leaned on the stone, and the letters of her name swam in his eyes.

"No one is ever truly gone, Lucifer," said a very large, very deep voice behind him.

Lucifer sighed and straightened, brushing a tear off his cheek so it wouldn't run into his mouth. "About time you showed up," he snapped, turning.

To his surprise, not one winged figure, but two stood on the hill behind him. Amenadiel stood with folded arms, his carefully tailored gray suit matching his gray wings to an almost tacky degree. Next to him, Maze stood with her burgundy wings only half-furled. She'd scarcely had them for half a century and clearly was still getting used to their weight on her back. Her leather-strap-and-metal-ring ensemble would turn a few mortal heads if she went walking around the city in it, and her smirk was familiar and smug.

Lucifer turned his attention for Amenadiel first, glaring daggers. "You didn't have the common decency to come to her funeral. Maze here made the time to come, and she has an entire underworld to manage."

"Still using me to make your point before you even say hello," Maze griped. "Thanks. I feel so appreciated."

"I was at her orientation," Amenadiel stated, with the patronizing, magnanimous calm of an angel at the top of his game. "I was a little busy."

"Don't see why. You had plenty of time to get everything ready. Have you ever watched a human — ANY human — die of a respiratory infection? She couldn't BREATHE. For days and days. Every breath hurt. I could see it in her face. The only reason she wasn't sobbing through the whole ordeal was that sobbing would have hurt worse. She just had to lie there and be in agony until the drugs took her away from it." Lucifer could hear his own voice, furious and still panicked, and hated the sound. "She never took anything stronger than a Tylenol in her life and there she was BEGGING me to get the nurses to give her more Oxycontin. I called in favors to get her more from off the street, but . . . I wasn't fast enough. So I took them all instead. But I wasn't fast enough for that either. I just went to sleep, and I woke up like this—immortal and alone. And with twenty messages on my phone from Trixie about planning a funeral that my own brother didn't even bother to show up for."

"You knew this was what you signed up for, Luci. Mortal lives end in deaths. The end is often painful, but it DOES end. And it has. Chloe's not in any more pain now."

Lucifer scowled. "How is she?" he demanded, even though he knew he wasn't supposed to.

"She's well," Amenadiel assured him. "She misses you."

Lucifer almost wished he hadn't asked. Knowing was almost worse, being one degree of separation away from her and still separated . . . knowing that he was causing her sorrow in the one place where she should feel none, because he was what he was, because he hadn't been able to stop himself from falling in love with her or her for falling in love with him.

"So to what do I owe the belated pleasure?" he asked, planting both hands on his cane and stretching his aching back; it helped more than he'd expected.

Amenadiel shrugged. "It was time."

"Time?" Lucifer demanded. "_Time_? It was _time_? What in hell do you know about _time_? You're up there, unchanging and eternal, while down here people are born and grow up and grow old and die, and they just lose everything that mattered to them, lifetime after lifetime, generation after generation, and _time_ only stops for me after I've lost everything and get to drag my desiccated carcass up this hill over and over again to meditate on how sadistic the bloody bastard must be who invented _time_!"

He hadn't shouted like this in years. It felt good to get in Amenadiel's face and shout at him. Satisfying, somehow.

"Lucifer!" Maze snapped. "Stop _whining_!"

She reached out a leg and swiftly kicked away his cane, sending it skittering down the hill. Lucifer staggered, but to his immense surprise stayed on his feet. His center of gravity had shifted backwards. He felt more stable on his own two feet than he'd felt in years.

"It's _over_," she insisted. "You're _done_. You can shut up now."

Lucifer squinted at her in confusion. "What do you mean, it's done? I've only just gotten started!"

"She means your time," Amenadiel clarified. "Your time is done. You've finished."

"Haven't you been paying attention? I don't _get_ to finish! She went before me and I'm trapped here, immortal, on Earth forever!"

"Then how do you explain that?" Amenadiel gestured towards Chloe's headstone.

Lucifer turned back and, to his great surprise, saw that an old man had somehow snuck up behind him and collapsed on the grass over Chloe's grave. The man had a cane exactly like his own.

"You had a heart attack, genius," said Maze. "You're dead."

Lucifer blinked, staring at the man, then the devil, then the angel, then the man again. "I'm not," he insisted feebly. "It's not possible. I can only die if Chloe is near me."

Maze pointed down. "About six feet."

"That's not _her_. She's not really here."

"Then why did you keep coming here?" asked Amenadiel reasonably.

Lucifer didn't have an answer for that.

He felt _taller_. That was the main thing. He'd been shouting in Amenadiel's face, and Amenadiel was six foot two if he was an inch. The warping clench of the muscles of his back, which had been constant for so long he'd almost forgotten what life had been like before it, was gone. He could breathe. He could move.

He looked at the headstone again, with what was left of his body sprawled across it. "She did me one last favor," he observed, and he could feel himself smiling. "The best of partners."

The view hit him then. It really was a magnificent vista; all of Los Angeles teemed and roiled below them, windows gleaming in the afternoon light, and beyond them the sea twinkled on the horizon like a promise. He'd lived an entire mortal life in this beautiful, wicked city. He knew every corner of it, from a career full of cases. People that he and Chloe had helped were living all over it, safe and well, their wrongs avenged. It _was _a good view. She'd been right. Again.

Lucifer sighed as he returned his attention to his brother and his friend. They were both waiting patiently for him to have his moment.

"All right," he said to Maze. "I'm ready."

Maze scoffed. "Oh, I'm not your ride. He is." She jerked a thumb at Amenadiel.

Amenadiel was standing quietly, a serene smile on his face, as he waited for Lucifer to catch up with what was going on.

"No," said Lucifer. "No! I'm not . . . I'm _Satan_! I am _the actual devil_! Where else would I go but down?"

"No, _I'm_ the devil," Maze snapped. "You didn't want the job, and I took it, and I have been working my butt off at it by the way, so you don't get credit for a title you abdicated."

"You are judged on your mortal life, Luci," said Amenadiel. "And for you, that started the day you fell in love with Chloe."

"And it ended when she died!"

"Well, clearly it didn't, because it just ended now."

"Dad would _never_. He would _NEVER_!"

"Dad likes Chloe," said Amenadiel. "And she has made her wishes _very _clear. You get to come to heaven, or she is gonna raise hell."

"I promised I'd help," Maze offered. When both brothers turned to stare at her, she added, "What? I don't want him in my territory, telling me all about how I'm doing everything _wrong_ just because it's not the way _he _would do it!"

"Josh also put in a good word for you," Amenadiel added.

Lucifer scoffed. "_Josh_ can mind his own bloody business!"

"No. That's not a skill that he has. Oh, and I almost forgot: Chloe sent me with a message for you."

This brought Lucifer up short. "A message? Isn't that . . . against the rules?"

Amenadiel shrugged. "Do you want to hear it or not?"

"Tell me."

"She said, and I quote, 'If he kicks up a fuss about being the devil, tell him to shut his face and get his ass up here, because I need my partner and I'm not interested in arguing about it'."

Lucifer considered. "That does sound like her."

"So are you coming quietly, or do I have to have Maze tie you up first?"

Maze's wicked grin spoke volumes.

"I only just got mobility back in fairly well every joint. I don't think I could cope with Maze's rope skills just now."

Maze huffed. "Spoilsport."

"Can't I just . . . fly myself? I mean, if I'm dead, then surely I should get them back." He gestured over his shoulder towards where his wings weren't.

Maze fluttered and resettled her burgundy wings. "MINE," she snapped. "I do the job, I get wings. You bum around on Earth while everyone else is working, you get carried, like the mortal you are."

"I don't WANT to be carried!"

"And I don't want to be standing here arguing with you," said Amenadiel. "Come on, Lucifer. Chloe's waiting."

That was probably the only sentence in any language that would get Lucifer to consent to be picked up by an angel. Sighing, he stood still and allowed Amenadiel to come around behind him and grip him around the chest.

"Don't wiggle, or I _will _drop you," Amenadiel promised.

"Would that hurt, now I'm dead?"

"No, but it would look very stupid. And you'd have to explain to Chloe how you managed to turn up at the gates of the Silver City with bracken in your hair."

"Point taken. I will remain stock still."

"Good luck, Boss," Maze said, spreading her own wings as she braced for her jump. "Give 'em hell from me."

Almost against his better judgment, Lucifer found himself finally smiling. "Thank you," he told her. "Thank you for everything."

"_Now_ he says it," Maze griped, and launched herself into the air. Amenadiel followed a second later, and Lucifer had one last glimpse of the Los Angeles skyline before he finally said goodbye to it for good.


End file.
